"Master, what's wrong?" Agri broke the tense silence first.
Adam, scanning the barriers edges for the source of his caution, took his gaze back and gently put his big, heavy, yet soft hand atop of Agri's head.
"Nothing… at least for now." Adam spoke, a cold snort leaving him as he said to Agri.
His wavering confidence was forcibly pulled back together, his mind, gifted with hell's inheritance, worked at lightning speeds.
The probe had barely made contact before he forcibly rejected the probe: meaning that the prober wasn't a strong entity.
At least, they weren't strong enough to warrant Adam's caution or fear; something which made him internally angry and ashamed for feeling, no matter how fleeting the emotions had sprouted for.
Still, he was slightly thankful for his scare. He know knew that 'playing' around shouldn't be done so indulgently when he still had a sword hanging over his neck.
A devil's pride mustn't falter, for their lineage and history gave them no reason to; they were higher beings, forces of nature.
Standing at the apex, Adam did what any natural born predator should when challenged; confront the opposing force!
Outside the barrier.
Crouched in her trench, Saphira jolted as if struck by a physical force.
Her probing gaze, a delicate, almost imperceptible extension of her mental will, had been severed the instant it made contact.
It wasn't just blocked, it was sensed and violently rejected. Like a ghostly hand that had barely made contact before a bright, unholy, divine light shot out and burned the grasp away.
A cold shock ran through her.
'How?' She had been so careful, alongside her expertise and mastery of her abilities which were pushed to the limits of her current realm, 'This devil's perception is unnaturally sharp!'
Then, as the initial surprise faded, her hint of wariness was blinded, as a more potent emotion took hold in their place: excited curiosity.
The information her hell's eyes had snatched in that fleeting moment of contact now burned in her mind.
Age: 1 Week.
Rank: Middle-Tier Lesser Devil.
Her full, pouting lips curved into a smirk of genuine, condescending amusement.
'A week old! An infant, still swaddled in the residual energies of his rebirth. That he had reached the middle-tier so quickly was noteworthy, a sign of a potent bloodline or a fortunate inheritance, but it was not intimidating!' Saphira's thoughts roared like an engine brought to life.
Like a starving man who had just found a fat sheep to eat!
She was a high-tier lesser devil!
She had over a year of life, which consisted of high intensity training, constant war and siege studies, and of honing her power and mana.
The gap between them was not a simple crack on the ground, it was a chasm!
Her initial caution, born from the strange sensitivity of his perception, evaporated, and was replaced by a heavy, reckless sense of superiority.
No, not reckless: it was warranted!
Her blazing golden gaze seemed to burst momentarily within the still dark ditch; her eyes glued to the kilometer tall nexus point. It was a treasure she had only seen within Lord Gorael territory, but now she could have one too!
He was a child playing with a weapon too large for him.
Her father's command now felt less like a death sentence and more like an annoying chore: being sent to babysit a talented, but ultimately juvenile devil.
This dismissal, the arrogant devaluation of the threat he posed, was a critical miscalculation.
It was a choice, a conscious decision to ignore the warning bell that his uncanny awareness had just rung.
She forgot the oddity in her rush to categorize him by the crude metrics of age, realm, and tier. The common way fiends classified one another.
It was a mistake born of pride, a sin she was deeply aligned with, and it was a choice she would soon come to regret…
She had only seen a newborn devil.
With this unexpected, yet ever so delightful, turn of events, Saphira's mind became a vortex of recalculation and rising ambitions.
The initial shock of being detected was now a fading memory, utterly overtaken by the intoxicating rush of this new, arrogant verdict.
Her father hadn't sent her to her doom or into the clutches of a peer. Rather he had, either through staggering incompetence or some unfathomable twist of fate, delivered her the opportunity of a lifetime.
A slow, wicked smile spread across her face, transforming her youthful, ethereal beauty into something predatory and sharp.
'He tricked me? Or has he, in his endless, dealings and calculations, mistakenly rewarded me with a fat sheep?' The thought was giddying, 'Was he unaware of the difference in strength?!'
She had initially braced herself to confront an equal!
A high-tier lesser devil whose power would have necessitated cunning, seduction, and carefully executed subversion. She had been prepared to unwilling offer her precious primal yin in a bid to plead for a treaty of sorts with the unknown devil.
But this… this was a gift!
A week-old middle-tier whelp, a child, for all his surprising perceptiveness and honed instincts, was nothing more than a toddler playing guard for a treasure he was too weak to defend.
A critical, fatal flaw in her reasoning was her blind faith in the infallibility of her hell's eyes. The demonic inscriptions shown in her pupils had delivered a clean, simple, yet beguiling readout.
Middle-Tier.
While powerful, absurd even, her demonic techniques could not convey the exact, hidden truths.
They could not measure the density of his demonic core, refined by constant rune carving and the absorption of potent negative emotions from his girls.
They could not see the profound enlightenments he has obtained from his constant, life or death struggles, and blessings from hell.
They could not know of the emotional surge from an Arch Devil, a being akin to a god, nor of him obtaining the primordial yin of Lyra.
Therefore, she could not see that the devil before her stood on the razor's edge, a single refinement of sin, or a surge of demonic power away, from catapulting into the high-tier himself!
The strength that he possessed was not just what was revealed on the surface; it was a quality of power, a depth she could not perceive.
Her technique gave her a glimpse, and she mistook it for the entire picture.